Joe’s Cloud & DevOps Portfolio

Resilient Static Hosting (PoC)

Note: My primary portfolio is hosted at joesinthe.cloud.
This site (joesinthecloud.net) is a proof-of-concept designed to demonstrate resilient static hosting using GitHub Pages (primary), fronted by AWS CloudFront and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) with S3 failover, and automated with GitHub Actions + OIDC (no static AWS keys).

🔗 Live (PoC): https://www.joesinthecloud.net
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joenervisjr
🔗 GitHub: github.com/joesinthecloud

1️⃣ The Problem

Modern static websites are often hosted on single points of failure like GitHub Pages. While cost-effective, this approach lacks resilience:

Real-world context: Businesses that rely on static marketing sites, documentation, or status pages risk downtime and loss of customer trust without high availability.

2️⃣ The Solution: How I Built It

I engineered a resilient hosting pipeline with automated failover and security best practices, using AWS to extend GitHub Pages.

🔹 Architecture

🔹 Example Configuration

Jekyll config (_config.yml):

title: "Joe’s Cloud & DevOps Portfolio"
description: "Resilient static hosting on GitHub Pages + CloudFront + S3 failover"
remote_theme: pages-themes/cayman@v0.2.0
plugins: [jekyll-remote-theme]
url: "https://www.joesinthecloud.net"
baseurl: ""

name: Build & Deploy (Pages + S3 Mirror)

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Build with Jekyll
        uses: actions/jekyll-build-pages@v1
        with:
          source: .
          destination: ./_site
      - name: Upload artifact for Pages
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: _site

  deploy:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment:
      name: github-pages
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

      - name: Download built site artifact
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: github-pages
          path: site

      - name: Extract artifact
        run: tar -xf site/artifact.tar -C site && rm site/artifact.tar

      - name: Configure AWS credentials (OIDC)
        uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
        with:
          role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::<ACCOUNT_ID>:role/<ROLE_NAME>
          aws-region: us-east-1

      - name: Mirror to S3 (failover origin)
        run: aws s3 sync "site/" "s3://<MIRROR_BUCKET>/" --delete

      - name: Invalidate CloudFront
        run: aws cloudfront create-invalidation --distribution-id <DIST_ID> --paths "/*"

🔹 Validation & Testing

3️⃣ Business Impact

This project demonstrates a production-grade approach to static hosting that solves the availability and maintainability gaps of GitHub Pages:

Business Utility:

🔗 Quick Links